Sunday, 31 December 2017

Who am I?
I am a Palestinian girl.
Before I was born, the occupation took most of my village’s lands to build a new settlement called Halamish.
Then they arrested my father. When my aunt went to visit him, one of the soldiers pushed her over the stairs of the court and she died.
Since I was little the settlers of Halamish keep stealing more and more of our lands to expand the settlement.

Our home has demolition order because it is in Area C. The settlers are allowed to build on our land, but not us.
In 2005, the settlers made the spring of our village part of the settlement and prevent us from using it, even though many of us are farmers.
All these things happened with great support from the Occupation army and government.
When the people of the my village started to resist the injustices with protest marches, my father was arrested again.

My mother was arrested too. My uncles, aunts, brothers, cousins - all of them were arrested too.
My cousin Mustafa was killed by the Israeli army. My uncle Rushdi was killed by the army too!
Later, an Israeli sniper shot my mom in the leg and she couldn’t move for long time.
Almost every week, the army breaks into our homes to arrest one of my family or to confiscate our laptops or phones.

During our marches, they shoot us with tear gas rubber bullets - my cousin is in hospital badly injured because he was shot in the face the week before.
A few days ago, two soldiers came to our house to take positions to shoot at the demonstrators from my village. I stood with my family to prevent them, the soldier pushed me and I slapped him.And now I am in jail!

My mother and my cousin are in jail too!The occupation government and media call me a terrorist.Do you know who I am?
And what would you do if that was your life? Or the life of your child?

Wednesday, 27 December 2017

As President Donald Trump derided the way federal courts had handled terrorism cases on Wednesday, federal prosecutors filed court documents illustrating the damage that some of his supporters could have inflicted in a terrorist attack they allegedly plotted against Muslim immigrants in Kansas.

Patrick Stein, Gavin Wright and Curtis Allen were arrested a little over a year ago in an FBI sting. The trio, allegedly part of a domestic terrorist group called “the Crusaders,” was charged with plotting a terrorist attack against Muslim immigrants for the day after the presidential election that they hoped would “wake people up.” They allegedly amassed a huge stockpile of weapons and prepared bombs they’d use in an attack targeting an apartment complex that housed Muslim immigrants.

“The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim,” Stein allegedly said during one meeting. “If you’re a Muslim I’m going to enjoy shooting you in the head.”

All three are awaiting trial. Last month, a federal judge ruled that one of the men who had requested bail was a “strong threat to society” and a “danger to the community” and should be kept in custody until trial.

An attorney for Wright said that the group “feared that then-President Obama would declare martial law if Donald Trump won the election” and that “massive social unrest would occur” no matter who won.

Federal prosecutors indicated in a court filing on Wednesday that the FBI’s Laboratory’s Explosives Unit had constructed and set off a 300-pound car bomb using fertilizer to show the damage that the bomb the men were allegedly building could have created.

Tuesday, 26 December 2017

It’s ironic. Over the years, our community has absorbed a lot of cultural toxicity and called it Islam. One example of this poison is in how we define the value of a woman. We’ve, of course, absorbed the notion that a woman’s value is defined by her appearance; but we’ve also absorbed another toxic notion that has no basis in Islam. That is the notion that when a woman has been previously married, her value decreases. This notion has come due to a combination of many un-Islamic views:

1. Un-Islamic Myth: ‘Divorce is a sin or curse.’ This is an un-Islamic belief from other religions that hold divorce to be forbidden or sinful. Some pagan rituals even expected widows to burn themselves to death after their husbands died. The underlying belief being that a woman is defined by her husband. Therefore, becoming single after marriage is akin to dying. Sadly, we see some by-products of this barbaric belief in our own communities such as looking down on divorced women and even considering widows to be “cursed” or “bad luck” to have around.

Islamic stance: Divorce is not a sin or curse. The majority of the women our Prophet (pbuh) married, including Khadijah (RA), were divorced or widowed. These are the mothers of the believers and the best of women. For example, Umm Salamah declined a proposal from both Omar (RA) and Abu Bakr (RA) as soon as her waiting period was over. In our Deen, the value of a woman is no way diminished by being previously married. This poisonous notion came from un-Islamic and Pagan cultures. Not Islam.

2. Un-Islamic Myth: ‘Those are another man’s children.’
Islamic stance: When our Prophet (pbuh) proposed to Umm Salamah (RA), she said: “O Messenger of Allah! It is not because I do not want you, but I am very jealous, and I fear that you might experience some wrong mannerism from me for which Allah would punish me. I am old and have children.” The Prophet (pbuh) replied in the authentic narration:
«أمَّا مَا ذَكَرْتِ مِنَ الْغَيْرَةِ فَسَوْفَ يُذْهِبُهَا اللهُ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ عَنْكِ، وَأَمَّا مَا ذَكَرْتِ مِنَ السِّنِّ فَقَدْ أَصَابَنِي مِثْلُ الَّذِي أَصَابَكِ، وَأَمَّا مَا ذَكَرْتِ مِنَ الْعِيَالِ فَإِنَّمَا عِيَالُكِ عِيَالِي»

“As for the jealousy that you mentioned, Allah the Exalted will remove it from you. As for your being old as you mentioned, I have suffered what you have suffered. And as for your having children, they are my children too.”

Monday, 25 December 2017

The Victorian Muslims were not celebrating Christmas in the Christian sense, said Humayun Ansari, professor and author of The Infidel Within: Muslims in Britain since 1800.

They simply wanted to reach out to the community.

In doing so, Ansari said, Quilliam and the early British Muslims were "indigenising" their Muslim identities.

"What Quilliam is doing in these early examples is trying to communicate that Islam is more familiar to the Christians of Britain then they think. He is trying to show that it is not something foreign and alien, but part of the Abrahamic tradition," Ansari told Al Jazeera.

"These early British Muslims were taking elements of British indigenous culture deemed acceptable within the Islamic framework and marrying them with their religious identities. In doing so, they offer a roadmap and blueprint for what an indigenous British Muslim identity might look like today."

In addition to the mosque, the Muslims of Liverpool founded a school, orphanage and a museum.

At school, students were taught a curriculum that integrated Islam with mainstream British education, including music classes.

They took part in literary and debating events titled A night with Charles Dickens, Oliver Cromwell and Ancient Britons.

In the playground, boys played football and cricket.

The Crescent newspaper, edited by Quilliam, regularly published inspiring quotes of notable Brits such as Shakespeare and Lord Tennyson.

Quilliam's role and influence were such that he was given the title of Sheikh Ul Islam of Britain by the Ottomans, and when he left Liverpool in 1908, it seems his community disbanded too.

Today, there are more than 2.5 million Muslims in Britain and, unlike Quilliam's community, they hail from a multitude of ethnic and cultural backgrounds and observe Islam differently.

"The Victorian Muslims were a small community, almost exclusively white English," said Sadiya Ahmed, founder of Everyday Muslim - an organisation which preserves Britain's Muslim heritage.

"Today, we have Muslims in Britain whose families have come from all over the world as well as those who are ethnically English, and this inevitably means they approach Christmas in a number of ways," she told Al Jazeera.

The issue recently came to the fore when Tesco, a supermarket brand, released its festive advertising campaign featuring a Muslim family celebrating Christmas.

Critics threatened to boycott the company because they saw Islam as incompatible with Christmas.

However, others welcome the advert as embracing multiculturalism.

"Some [Muslims] will completely shun it as a Christian festival, believing it has nothing to do with Islam," said Ahmed.

"Others will embrace it as a secular British tradition, putting up trees, exchanging presents and eating a halal turkey on Christmas Day. And then there will be those viewing it as a celebration of the birth of an important prophet of Islam.

"Britain's Muslim community is far more diverse today than it was when Quilliam was alive, and this is why their views on Christmas are equally diverse."

Sunday, 24 December 2017

The videos began circulating on December 6, the same day that a charred body was found by a passerby who informed the police. The victim was a laborer from the eastern Indian state of West Bengal who worked near the area where he was killed.

A Hindu man got his 12-year-old nephew to film him killing a Muslim laborer in India, in an attempt to raise funds for his anti-Islam camapign, according to police in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan.

The suspect, Shambulal Regar, shared his bank account details along with videos of the murder that mainly circulated on Whatsapp and received 300,000 rupees ($4,665) from more than 700 people across India.

“The accused wanted to become a Hindu hero after killing a Muslim man; his main aim was to collect money after committing the hate crime,” police officer Anand Shrivastava told Reuters.

Police have since frozen his wife's bank account as more than 500 people pledged donations to Regar's legal defense, local media reported. His supporters also staged a demonstration on Thursday. Ensuing clashes injured at least 30 demonstrators and 20 police officers, and there were 50 arrests, authorities told local media.

Regar was arrested the day after the body was found. Regar’s underaged nephew was also arrested last week as police said he was the one who shot the videos, The Indian Express reported.

In one of the videos, which have since been taken down, Regar is seen attacking the man with an iron rod and then stabbing him as he lies on the ground, local media reported. In another, he pours a liquid over the body of the man and then throwing a match on it as he rants about “jihadis.”

According to the police, the man described himself as a proud Hindu fighting against a “love jihad”—a term Hindu hardliners use to accuse Muslim men of marrying Hindu women to convert them to Islam.

The police don't believe Regar knew the victim of his hate crime, the latest in a string of attacks against India’s Muslim minority—less than 8 percent of the country’s 1.32 billion citizens—that has increasingly been the target of Hindu extremists.

In one recent instance, a Muslim man was shot dead while transporting cows near the Rajasthan-Haryana border after he and his two aides were attacked by a group of people, as BBC reported in November.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who leads the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has publicly condemned the cow-related violence, but his critics say he hasn’t done enough to stop the anti-Muslim attacks.

After Hindu vigilantes take the cows from Muslim farmers, these end up in cow shelters that often sell or give the stolen cattle to Hindu farmers, a practice that has seen a steep increase in states governed by Modi’s party, according to a Reuters investigation published last month.

Wednesday, 20 December 2017

The exaggeration of the size of the Muslim community in Poland is tied with political changes in the country in the last couple of years and increasingly divisive nationalistic rhetoric around the imagined presence of Muslims in the country. The 2015 elections won by the right-wing Law and Justice party opened up a space in Parliament to members of the far right National Movement.

Politicians have frequently invoked Islamophobic rhetoric, empowering far-right groups and contributing to a climate where not only Islamophobia, but also anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism and other expressions of hate seem permissible. This in turn empowered far-right groups that organised several anti-refugee and anti-Muslim demonstrations in 2015 in cities that are home to Muslim minorities such as Białystok. Wrocław, Gdańsk and Kraków.

While Muslims were previously disliked as an ‘external enemy’ and usually mentioned in the context of terrorist attacks abroad or through the Polish involvement in military invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the figure of the Muslim as a dangerous Other slowly transformed to an ‘internal enemy’ who was supposedly posing a threat to Poland.

The refugee crisis helped in cementing views that Muslims were taking over Europe. It mattered less that this was predominantly an imaginary threat as the substantial inflow of migrants and refugees to Poland has not taken place. The new Polish government has been particularly reluctant in opening its borders to refugees and as such, Poland did not experience a ‘migration crisis’ and was never even a transit country for refugees.

In contrast to other European countries where Islamophobia is on the rise, Poland’s minorities are too small a group to challenge these false ideas. Instead, they have painfully felt the country’s’ increasing hostility towards all forms of Otherness.Our research on Islamophobiain Poland has confirmed that there has been an unprecedented rise in anti-Muslim sentiments resulting in attacks on individuals, mosques and places of business such askebab shops(for a detailed chronological review of recent attacks see theEuropean Islamophobia Report 2015and the forthcoming 2016 report).

Monday, 18 December 2017

“I met him because he said he had a very good solution for all of these problems,” she tells The Independent. “I did not trust him. He said: ‘I don’t think we should deport people out the country: the black race is much more violent than the white race, and the best solution is to stop you having children.’

I said: ‘But I want children.’ He said: ‘I’ve found a solution, we can inseminate you with the white genes, so you can get the white children’.”

The campaigner has had a number of instances where she has been overwhelmed with emotion, and admits it can be difficult to engage with people with such angry and hateful views.

“I am a human – of course I get upset. I wish I did not cry,” she says. “It is very hard to talk with these people but someone has to do it. I no longer think that the right strategy is to ignore them.”

Saturday, 16 December 2017

Its mid-December and for Muslims living in the western society, it's generally difficult times. Its the Christmas parties that can't be avoided that contains drinks and oppotunities to fall in Satan's traps.

Whenever I need to go to any of these unavoidable parties, my intention is to educate atleast 3 people on how Christmas has got nothing to do with Christianity and how bad Alcohol is for health. Follow these links if you want to get up to speed on Christmas and Alcohol.

There is a good article in Al-Jazeera about how Victorian Muslims celebrated Christmas. For those of you who may not know, Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901.

The Liverpool Muslim Institute was founded by the Liverpudlian William 'Abdullah' Quilliam [Courtesy: Abdullah Quilliam Society]

At 6am on December 25, 1888, the winter sun was yet to rise over the English city of Liverpool.

A Victorian terrace house was feverish with activity.

The soft glow of candlelight emanating from 8 Brougham Terrace revealed men and women busily putting up decorations and preparing food for the big celebration ahead, Christmas Day.

In one corner, a familiar Victorian scene of a woman playing the piano and directing hymn rehearsals, the singers' voices muted by the howling of a bitter northeasterly wind as it rattled the thin panes of glass.

This was Britain's first mosque and Muslim community preparing for their very first Christmas Day.

At 8am, having led the tiny congregation in the early morning prayer, the Imam finally opened the mosque doors.

Imam William Henry "Abdullah" Quilliam founded the mosque after embracing Islam in 1887, aged 31 years old.

He was greeted by more than 100 of the city's poor, who had been invited to enjoy a charitable Christmas breakfast inside what locals called "Islam Church".

As the group of recent converts served the paupers a hearty meal of "sandwiches, bread and meat, seedloaf, bunloaf, bread and butter, tea and coffee," the music began.

Hymns praising the birth of the Prophet Isa, or Jesus, rung out through the venue. By evening, numbers swelled. Word had got around, and the Muslims offered a "substantial tea" and small musical concert to the visitors.

The entertainment began with "mesmeric performances" by two young Muslims before "some delightful airs upon the zither, the fairy bells and the mandolin" by one Miss Warren.

The finale was a "magic lantern" show and photo series from the imam's recent tour across distant Muslim lands.

These descriptions of Victorian Muslims at Christmas were taken from the pages of The Crescent, the country's first Muslim newspaper.

It was published by the Liverpool Moslem Institute between 1893 and 1907 and was recently made available online by the Abdullah Quilliam Society - which is based at the historic mosque - in partnership with the British Library.

"This reminds us there was an earlier generation of Muslims, looking to spread the word of Islam through finding points in common rather than things to argue about," said Timothy Winter, a prominent British Muslim scholar.

Winter, the dean of Cambridge Muslim College and lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, converted to Islam in 1979. He has worked extensively with the archives.

Britain's first Muslim community mostly comprised English converts.

The Christmas scenes, described in every January issue of The Crescent, may come as a surprise.

Winter said the festivities demonstrated a willingness to appropriate local traditions, something that was easier because the group had grown up with them.

"They possessed a spirit of openness and hospitality and were more concerned with God and truth and conveying the word [as opposed to] boundary issues and questions of identity and difference," Winter told Al Jazeera.

Quilliam's role and influence were such that he was given the title of Sheikh Ul Islam of Britain by the Ottomans, and when he left Liverpool in 1908, it seems his community disbanded too.

Today, there are more than 2.5 million Muslims in Britain and, unlike Quilliam's community, they hail from a multitude of ethnic and cultural backgrounds and observe Islam differently.

"The Victorian Muslims were a small community, almost exclusively white English," said Sadiya Ahmed, founder of Everyday Muslim - an organisation which preserves Britain's Muslim heritage.

"Today, we have Muslims in Britain whose families have come from all over the world as well as those who are ethnically English, and this inevitably means they approach Christmas in a number of ways," she told Al Jazeera.

While it is common for some "very religious" Muslims to say how Un-Islamic wishing your neighbour, friends or family who may not be Muslims are, I would point out to Fatawa on Islam Awareness Homepage that say otherwise.

Muslims, however, are most respectful of what others believe and wish to live on friendly terms with all their neighbors, whether they are Muslim or not. In this context, returning the Christmas greetings of non-Muslim friends does not present us with a problem.

Obviously, if we sent a card, it would not be a religious card with Christian symbols, but rather some other symbol of the festive season. If the people we are responding to are devout believers in the Christmas message, we might send a greeting that says something like, "May God bless you all as you celebrate your feast," out of respect for their religious belief.

If they are, like the vast majority, simply celebrating what has become an important social occasion, we can respond to a well-intentioned greeting with a card that says something like "Compliments of the season" or "Greetings," since neither they nor we are celebrating the religious festival.

In such a context, even a card with a picture of a tree or some mistletoe or a robin red-breast, and the greeting "Merry Christmas" is not really a problem for either of us.

Going for drinks in the pub to celebrate is clearly out of the question. Going to parties where alcohol is being consumed is not how Muslims behave. However, if our non-Muslim neighbors invite us into their house for a piece of Christmas cake or a mince pie, we can accept their invitation.

Christmas should not be allowed to become a time where Muslims are being singled out as being unfriendly or not a part of the community. Indeed, we should be seen by our neighbors as full of fun and quite comfortable living with them. Let us not forget, though, to invite those same people to join us in our own homes at the time of the `Eid or to join us for iftar during Ramadan.

Showing our non-Muslim friends that Islam is a religion of peace and that we are peaceful and kind people is, indeed, at the heart of how we should behave. Peaceful and kind does not, of course, mean weak. We are not offering Christmas greetings out of weakness because we are in a minority. No, our greetings to our neighbors come from a strong and proud faith that we are called to be Muslim.

Our actions throughout the year, not just at Christmas time, should show how good Muslims behave and how we are faithful to prayer and dedicate all things to the Mercy of Almighty Allah. Indeed, Christmas time is actually a time for da`wah.

In a world which has lost all sense of God and which turns to alcohol and consumerism to drown its sorrows, we can show that there is a better way and that the way for all mankind to experience peace is not by kissing under the mistletoe or visiting Santa Claus in his Grotto, but by embracing Islam. In sha' Allah, even Christmas is a time for us to tell others about Islam.

Friday, 15 December 2017

Jerusalem: One of the Prophet’s companions reported: "Once I asked Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) what was the first mosque established on earth; he said Al-Masjid (the mosque) Al-Haram (in Mecca). Then I asked him: Then which mosque? He replied: Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa."

Chapter 17, verse 1, of the Quran states: "Glorified be He (God) who took his servant (Muhammad) for a journey by night from al-Masjid al-Haram (in Mecca) to al-Masjid al-Aqsa (in Jerusalem), whose precincts we have blessed."

Bedouin: I'd like to be loved by God and His messenger.Prophet:If you love what God and His messenger love, you will be among their beloved ones.

Bedouin: I wish to be safe from God's wrath on the Day of Judgment.Prophet:If you do not lose your temper with any of your fellow creatures, you will be safe from the wrath of God on the Day of Judgment.

Bedouin: I'd like my prayers to be responded.Prophet:If you avoid forbidden actions your prayers will be responded.

Bedouin: I'd like God not to disgrace me on the Day of Judgment.Prophet:If you guard your chastity, God will not disgrace you on the Day of Judgment.

Bedouin: I'd like God to provide me with a protective covering on the Day of Judgment.Prophet:Do not uncover your fellow peoples faults, and God will provide you with a covering protection on the Day of Judgment.

Bedouin: What will save me from sins?Prophet:Tears, humility and illness.

Bedouin: What are the best deeds in the eyes of God?Prophet:Gentle manners, modesty and patience.

Bedouin: What are the worst evils in the eyes of God?Prophet:Hot temper and miserliness.

Bedouin: What alleviates the wrath of God in this life and in the Hereafter?Prophet:Concealed charity and kindness to relatives.

Bedouin: What extinguishes hell's fires on the Day of Judgment?Prophet:Patience in adversity and misfortunes.

Imam El Mustaghfiri said: "I have never heard a tradition more comprehensive of the beauties of religion, and more beneficial than this hadith. It collects all the good things of Islam but not put to use." (Related by Imam Ibn Hambal)

NOTE: This is a widely quoted narration but according to some sources it does not have an "Isnad" (chain of narrators). Hadith scholars note that this is possibly a collection and compilation of the meanings of several well-known hadiths and reports.